An Austrian commission investigating sexual abuse cases in the Roman
Catholic Church said over 800 people had come forward to
register as victims in the past year.
Over a third of the cases have
been settled, the head of the commission, Waltraud Klasnic, told a news
conference.
She said the number of complaints showed that the church
must screen priests more carefully and look into their mental state
before allowing them to qualify.
Klasnic said the commission, which was set up a year ago, was also
looking into the structures that allowed such abuse and violence to
occur, according to remarks carried by the Austria Press Agency (APA).
Around three-quarters of the 837 complaints involved male victims.
The
commission does not pass legal judgment but hands over plausible cases
to the authorities and most have the cases processed so far have
involved compensation.
Abuse scandals in Austrian Catholic institutions have badly damaged
the religion’s image with a record 87,000 people quitting the church in
2010.
Hundreds of reports of child sexual abuse in Austrian Catholic
institutions were triggered by the resignation of an arch-abbot in
Salzburg last April after he admitted to sexually abusing a boy 40 years
ago.
The abuse crisis has also hit the United States and several other European countries, including the pope’s native Germany.
The church plays an important role in Austria, a socially
conservative Alpine country of 8 million, where around two-thirds of
people described themselves as Catholic in 2008.